Luistermutant 2021

Game labyrinth with live orchestra Micha Hamel: ‘Listening is more fun, difficult, and important than you think’. ‘Mendelssohn has one foot in the grave’, Micha Hamel says. ‘Will the performance of Luistermutant 2021 be the last time we play his music, yes or no? That’s up to the audience. Either the heritage of the Nineteenth Century is done for or we find a way in which it can remain relevant. In Luistermutant 2021, Mendelssohn exemplifies Nineteenth Century orchestral music. The audience decides: we need to save Mendelssohn or bury him’. Mendelssohn’s music is beautiful, but is it still relevant for today’s society? We will be exploring this question together with the audience. It could be that the musical heritage from the Nineteenth Century is done for. But just as well, we may discover why we should preserve it, and if so: what we might learn from it.

In Luistermutant 2021, Mendelssohn symbolises Nineteenth Century orchestral music. At the end of the piece, the audience will decide whether we should preserve Mendelssohn or part with him. Together with director Arlon Luijten, composer, poet, and researcher Micha Hamel developed Luistermutant 2021, a production based on the Nineteenth Century importance of music, of listening. Hamel: ‘A good listening culture is important in society, in real life. Listening to each other is the foundation of a healthy democracy. Listening is a skill you’ll need in order to be loving, empathetic and helpful. Adopting the other’s perspective occurs through listening’. ‘In the Nineteenth Century, music wasn’t merely beautiful, but important as well’, Hamel says. ‘It was socially relevant and served to uplift humanity; it was the highest art. Much composing took place, humanity had to be uplifted, citizens needed to have their own art form, as in the Romantic tradition. Music was important for your education as a human being. Today, music is merely beautiful. We live in a hedonistic era in which it’s all about the experience and our individual emotions and sensations. When we listen to a symphony by Mendelssohn or Schumann now, we mainly think it’s beautiful, and we don’t think: this piece will make us better people. But people thought this in the past!’ Hamel and consorts are banking on the possibility of learning to listen. Not by giving information about a symphony by Mendelssohn, which is already in the program booklet, but by showing how you might listen and what an adventure listening is. ‘We use serious games to help people learn to listen. These allow us to reach a wide audience. It’s a fantastic tool for training people. When you’re gaming, you need to engage with the game and are automatically connected with the game’s subject. If you’re an active participant in the production yourself, it really comes to life in a different way. Consequently, you’re only allowed to attend our show if you’ll participate, not if you just want to be a spectator’. ‘The Large Hall of the Muziekgebouw is set up as a listening garden. Music by Mendelssohn is played, as well as work from young Dutch composer Bram Kortekaas, and performed by the philharmonie zuidnederland. A number of actors venture to consider whether classical music is or isn’t mere old junk. There are installations where you can practice new listening positions as well. For the record, we’re not trying to make a classical concert more hip, we really hope to discover in what way classical music is still relevant to the world of today’. ‘You can see the concert hall as a gym for training your listening muscles. The show is set up in such a way as to allow you to discover what listening means to you. Luistermutant 2021 is not a diktat, as in: you must learn to listen. Instead, you’ll discover on your own you’re not nearly as good at it as you thought. You’ll discover what it is to listen to a human being, to listen to music, and whether these two are in line with each other. A symphony is particularly suitable for this listening exercise, allowing you to wander through its myriad layers. It’s an architectural structure with themes, a melody, voices which may or may not brush up against each other - there’s always something drawing your attention. We hope someone comes to the venue with two ears and then leaves with five’.